


Hortense Mitchell’s Tips For De-stress-ifying

by skyline



Category: Big Time Rush (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:46:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23073430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyline/pseuds/skyline
Summary: Or, how it took Logan and James a few tries to get along.
Relationships: James Diamond/Logan Mitchell
Comments: 6
Kudos: 38





	Hortense Mitchell’s Tips For De-stress-ifying

  1. _Hot Cocoa_



Circa age nine, Logan entered a brand new school with his favorite red bookbag, five Power Ranger notebooks, three freshly sharpened number two pencils, a sharpener shaped like a lion’s head, and his bravest brave-face.

Moving to Minnesota was the actual worst thing that had ever happened to him, in a big way, but Logan was one hundred percent determined to make the best of it. Optimism was key, he figured, because who could hate the scrawny transfer student if he wore a smile bigger than the sun?

Evidently, lots of people.

Logan’s resolve lasted all the way until lunch, when three kids about as large as he imagined giants would be shook him down for everything he had. At the very end of the day, Logan came home with no bookbag, no Power Ranger notebooks, no pencil sharpener, three broken number two pencils crunching uncomfortably inside his underwear, and not even a tiny trace of a brave-face.

“Honey,” his mom cooed the moment she spotted his ripped t-shirt and awkward waddle. “What happened?”

He sobbed the story into his mom’s collarbone, the steady comfort of her perfume and soft touch of her hands curled against his spine soothing all the pain away. His mom was the best, _is_ the best, and would never stop loving Logan so much he could burst with it.

But he didn’t know that back then. What Logan did know is that his mom didn’t mind when he stuttered or stopped. She didn’t care when he blubbered or yelled. She barely batted an eye when he got snot on her shirt and tangled his hands in her hair. And once he was done rehashing every excruciating detail, Logan’s mom petted his hair through the enraged, embarrassed trembles that wracked their way through his tiny body like she didn’t have anywhere else to be; a job to go back to or dinner to make.

After Logan went quiet, she bustled him off her lap with the fondest of smiles, setting him gently down on the linoleum in their brand new kitchen – new, new, everything was new, and Logan hated it, hated change and hated moving and hated every single kid in his brand new stupid school – so that she could whip up some hot cocoa.

She overcooked the milk, filled the entire kitchen with the smell of burning chocolate, and piled the leftover dishes in a precariously leaning tower instead of cleaning up.

“It’s messy,” Logan told her, certain in his nine year old wisdom that cleanliness was the path to godliness, or at least the best possible way of avoiding salmonella.

“It’s okay.” She beamed, her eyes crinkling soft at the corners. “Everything will be alright.”

Logan was smart, always had been for his age, but he wasn’t immune to his mom’s promise that the whole wide world right itself, eventually. She was his _mom_ , and she’d never told a lie. Besides, she wasn’t wrong. Together, the two of them spent the night cuddled on the couch, marathonning Star Trek on their big TV, marshmallow sticky against their lips and thick, rich cocoa drowning out the saltiness of Logan’s drying tears.

By the end of the night, everything really was alright.

* * *

  1. _Hockey_



James Diamond became a constant in Logan’s life three weeks later, when he stepped up to Logan on the playground with an offering of friendship.

Specifically, the offering was the lion’s head pencil sharpener Logan lost to bullies on his first day, and James wasn’t necessarily giving it back out of _friendship_ , per se.

“My mom says I have to say sorry.”

Yeah, so James _was_ one of the bullies who beat Logan up. Details.

“Are you going to say it?” Logan prompted.

James’s fingers tightened around the pencil sharpener. “Say what?”

He had really long eyelashes and a pink hue in his cheeks, like a girl. In the absence of anyone trying to hit him, Logan realized James actually wasn’t actually all that much bigger than anyone else on the blacktop.

“Sorry,” Logan echoed, feeling a lot like he was the one apologizing.

Mouth smoothing into a horizontal line, James stubbornly insisted, “I already said it.”

Girls jumping rope against the wide white lines painted against asphalt shrieked with laughter. A blond boy perched on the edge of the slide hollered something indistinguishable. A group of kids tumbled over the grass in a wrestling match for a wayward soccer ball.

Logan said, “Did not.”

“Did too.”

“Did not.”

“Did too,” James replied, his lower lip beginning to jut unattractively.

“Did! Not!”

Logan tried to swipe for his pencil sharpener before James changed his mind, but it was too late. Snatching his hand away, James said, “Bet you this stupid thing-“ he brandished the lion’s head with its tawny mane and golden eyes and ferocious glower high in the air “-that I did.”

Logan strained up on his tippy toes, but James danced away, taunting. “How d’you even prove that, jerk?”

James’s face furrowed. “Don’t call me a jerk.”

“Then don’t be a jerk, _jerk_.”

Face screwing up into a magnificent, angry contortion, James wore an expression that Logan would one day come to associate with bad decisions. That day, though, he was blissfully unaware. He didn’t realize anything was awry until James yelled across the yard, “Kendall, catch!” and hurled Logan’s stupid pencil sharpener straight at the head of the blond kid on the slide.

The kid caught it, because Kendall Knight never met a ball he managed to drop. Only it was more impressive when Logan didn’t know that.

Kendall hopped off the slide with athletic grace and frowned down at his hand, peering at the lion’s head from every possible angle before reaching a decision that appeared to satisfy him.

He walked straight on over to Logan and handed his pencil sharpener back. “I think this is yours.”

“ _Kendall_!” James yelped.

“ _James_!” Kendall mimicked, voiced laced with a snicker. He turned back to Logan and inquired, “Is he bothering you? He bothers a lot of people.”

Logan laughed a bit helplessly, because Kendall was the first person his own age who’d spoken more than two non-angry, non-sullen words to him in weeks. He wore a striped t-shirt and purple shorts, and looked surer of himself than any little boy Logan had ever met. Which meant Logan was instantaneously delirious with envy, but also a bit desperate for this new potential friend-cum-hero’s attention.

He pasted on his best teacher-pleasing expression and said, “Pretty much,” only to remember afterwards that James could punch him in the face for it.

But it was fine, because the insult was lost to the wind under James’s thunderous protest of, “I’m not bothering anyone. We were making a bet.”

Kendall’s interest was piqued, his bright gray-green eyes sparking even brighter with glee. Logan liked that impish smile and the mischievous way he asked, “What kind of bet?”

He liked it so much, he didn’t argue that there wasn’t, in fact, a bet.

Not when James retorted, “The kind I’m gonna win,” and not when Kendall decided to take it upon himself to set the terms.

In hindsight, Logan wished he was less desperate for friends.

“I don’t know how to play hockey,” he pouted, staring at the tiny net set against the back of their school with undisguised horror.

“You should learn. It’s the best sport ever,” Kendall replied fervently, both hands on Logan’s shoulders. “No time like now.”

“But it’s not fair!”

James stuck his tongue out, more than pleased with the tides turning in his favor.

Logan resolutely kept his tongue in his mouth, because they’d put him in a face mask thing, and he wasn’t sure if it was rigged to do something weird, like cut off his tongue.

“Hockey’s violent,” he objected, parroting his mom. “Violence isn’t the answer.”

“Please,” Kendall said dismissively, shaking him by the shoulders. “Hitting stuff is the best. Try it!”

He was trapped, was the thing. Trapped by James and his stink-eye and Kendall and his encouraging, troublemaking grin. So Logan did what they said and pretended he knew how to hit stuff with sticks, and what happened was…

It paid off.

He scored five goals to James’s three, because it turned out hockey was mostly about hand-eye coordination and simple trigonometry. Easy-peasy.

Plus, Kendall was right. To an angry nine year old boy who’d put up with too much, hitting stuff was _the best_.

Kendall was so impressed he fell all over himself to beg Logan to join the team. James sulked through the entire invitation, face practically melting with fury. He worked himself into a full blown tantrum before he stalked away, but Kendall didn’t notice.

He was too busy clutching Logan’s arm and demanding, “What’s your name, dude?”

“Hortense,” Logan replied. “My name’s Hortense.”

* * *

  1. _Reading_



James…did not want to be Logan’s friend for a really long time.

At first, Logan was A-Okay with that, because James was a butthead and Kendall and his other best friend, Carlos, were so awesome that Logan couldn’t figure out why they tolerated James at all.

Only, the more time he spent with the three of them, the more he saw that James wasn’t really so bad. He was vain and self-centered and a little bit mean, maybe, but he was also loyal, and fun, and sometimes, when no one was looking, he could be really sweet. He always shared his pudding and helped Kendall talk to girls and one time, when his other friends tried to bully Carlos for being odd, James got really, really mad and scared them off.

Being James’s friend began to look less and less like a chore and more and more like something Logan actually wanted to do. He just wasn’t sure how to go about it.

Mostly because James refused to acknowledge his existence.

Logan tried taking one for the team, approaching James during recess with a worthy sacrifice of his sacred pencil sharpener in hand, but James batted it away. The lion’s head went flying, Logan’s fingers smarting with the sting of his slap.

He lost his temper. A little bit.

“I was just trying to be nice!” He shouted, stomping away.

Logan ended up hiding out in the library after school instead of going home with Kendall and Carlos and James to play video games, like he told his mom he would.

He felt bad about lying, but it was easier sometimes hanging out with books, which didn’t hit him or yell at him or refuse to cooperate with him ever. In fact, Logan was fifty pages into Treasure Island – a book that never mouthed off at him at all – happy as a clam, right up until James ruined it all.

He sat down across from Logan, legs folded, and poked the book’s cover repeatedly, demanding, “What’s that?”

“A book.” Logan replied shortly, in no mood for games.

James blinked. “What’s that?”

“You’re not funny.”

“I’m the funniest.” James sat back until his elbows hit the library’s threadbare carpet, all long limbs growing out disproportionately from his pudgy belly and round face. Puberty was looming in the distance, ready to catch them all. “Reading’s dumb.”

“You’re dumb,” Logan rejoined automatically.

“You’re dumber.” James poked the book again. “Doesn’t that hurt your brain?”

“It makes me feel better.”

“Why do you feel bad?”

Logan settled the book in his lap, the white pages and black ink swimming in front of his eyes. He was such a baby sometimes. “Because you don’t like me.”

Shifting uncomfortably, James said, “That’s ‘cause you’re a friend-stealer.”

Logan’s head snapped up. “A what?”

“You wanna take Kendall and Carlos away from me. _Friend-stealer_.”

“I don’t want to steal your friends,” Logan argued, closing the book. “I want to _be_ your friend. S’different.”

“Oh.” James chewed on his lips, nibbling them back and forth. He decided, “I guess that’s okay then.”

Several quiet minutes passed. Logan had to ask, “…what’s that mean?”

James rolled his eyes.

“It means I’m missing video game night for this, so are you gonna read me your dumb book, or what, Hortense?”

Logan valiantly tried to read Treasure Island to James. He did.

It wasn’t his fault James got annoyed after half a page and declared the library an alien vessel bent on numbing the minds of mankind.

It might have been his fault he wrestled James into the stack of children’s literature and knocked the entire thing over in the process, but hey.

At least he had a new friend.

* * *

  1. _Bubble Baths._



There was little Logan enjoyed more in the world than filling a tub with bubbles and wallowing in it for hours. Bizarrely enough, it was hard to do exactly that when living with three other dudes, a chaperone, and a finicky teenage girl. Logan – always Logan now, never Hortense – accepted the rare opportunity for bubble baths when he got them, whether it was early in the night or at the ass crack of dawn.

“No. _No_. You don’t get to use all the hot water.”

“Watch me.” He stepped past James and twisted the spigot, happily gushing water all over the tub. The knots between his shoulders had knots and all he wanted was to lay naked and soak in about eight gajillion bubbles. Was that too much to ask?

James glared at him like it was.

Whatever, Logan’s knots were all his fault anyway.

Or at least, the band’s fault.

There were a lot of awesome things about being famous. Like the first time a toddler walked up to Kendall and bossily demanded his attention. It was the funniest thing Logan had ever seen. Kendall wasn’t the best with kids to begin with – there was a reason that Katie was better at poker and pranks than dress-up and make believe – and a tiny person clinging to his leg screaming, “ _Hug_!” for nearly five minutes didn’t do much to improve his opinion of them. His eyebrows shot so far up into his hairline that Logan’s worried they wouldn’t ever come back down.

And what about the time that Carlos was able to throw that huge party on the record label’s dime in support of charity? Carlos was always at his best when he was helping other people or wearing his stupid plastic party king crown, and that night he got to be king of the canapés and donate about eight million in cold, hard cash to a foundation for the widowed and orphaned families of policemen and women. That was a good night.

Then there’s the time that James got to go on a real, actual date with Nicole Sherzinger. It was a catastrophe in the making – nobody needs that many elephants – but it only happened because of the band.

So yeah, there were a lot of great parts about being famous.

There was also a lot of suck.

Being accidentally bodychecked by a tabloid photographer, for instance, was not much with the fun. “I’m taking a bath.”

“I forbid it! It’s forbidden!”

Logan cradled his favorite book in one hand and a cup of cocoa in the other, and he tried very hard not to give into his first instinct, which was to punch James in the face. “Move.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

Frustrated, Logan tried to chart out his next move. James always had this effect on him, on account of being his childhood bully, and reluctant friend, and now constant roommate. Logan loved the guy, but sometimes his obstinacy was really, _really_ grating. He finally settled on his pocket checkmate, the one thing he knew James wouldn’t be able to tolerate. “James, I’m getting naked whether you’re here or not.”

James laughed, high pitched and uncertain. “No, you won’t.”

A challenge, then.

“Yes, I will,” Logan replied, steadily. He put the cocoa and the book down on ledge of the bathtub, and began thumbing open the top of his shirt. “Try me.”

James gulped, watching while Logan quickly unhooked the rest of his buttons, and shrugged his shirt off his shoulders. He watched while Logan balled the shirt up in his hands, and even began to tremble when the airy, cotton thing drifted airily to the floor.

Daring, Logan hovered his hands over the fly of his jeans.

“Fine!” James yelped. “You can have the bathroom.”

“Thank you,” Logan replied, leaning down to grab his mug and his novel.

Except, when he straightened up, James was still standing there. His eyes traced the pattern of freckles across Logan’s collarbone, something that Logan did not quite recognize lingering on his face. “Uh. James? Are you okay?”

James opened his mouth.

James closed his mouth.

James fled the bathroom, the door slamming closed behind him.

Logan shrugged. He had a bubble bath to get on with.

* * *

  1. _Friendship (Kind Of)_



“Game show hosts wear too many sequins.”

“Yeah, _you_ have the right to judge.” Logan jabbed a finger at James’s closet, overstuffed with glittery, sparkly, glimmering unmentionables. Left of the doorframe leaned the demo cover for Breakout Dreams, which, “I thought you were going to leave. For good.”

“Leave my buds? Nah, never,” James replied, easy-breezy.

As an afterthought, he nudged a pile of clothes with his foot, strategically inching muscle-tees and button downs and unwashed jeans in front of the picture, like, there. Miserable mistake _managed_.

Logan frowned. “I can still see it. And it involves a lot of skin. Much too much skin, and not even close to enough cloud.”

“Kendall said the same thing.”

“Kendall is wise. That is why we let him make the big decisions, like where to put the cumulus.”

Logan nodded vehemently, although Kendall was out on a smoothie run and couldn’t see his perfect display of loyal minion-ship. James, who cared considerably less about pleasing His Royal Highness in absentia – because let’s be real, Kendall would always love them regardless – scrunched up his face and emphasized, “I came back. I did. I never wanted to leave in the first place.”

“You’ve done it before.”

“Not fair. Past things should stay in past places! We’ve had this talk.”

“It’s okay. I was just as quick to abandon ship.”

“We all went a little crazy there for a second.”

“It’s scary,” Logan agreed. “Thinking one day we’ll be on our own.”

“Speak for yourself,” James protested. “I’m never leaving you guys.”

“Never is a long time, James. What about when you get married?”

James frowned. “Who says I’m getting married?”

“You love girls.”

“I love people,” James corrected. “Girls included, obviously. But you guys, too.”

He was pouting now, being ridiculous.

Logan couldn’t help laughing a little bit. “I don’t think it’s the same thing.”

“It could be!”

“Ummmm, I don’t think so.” Logan snorted softly to himself, fully prepared to tell Kendall and Carlos all about this conversation.

James caught at his wrist. “Logan, I’m serious.”

“Sure, you are.”

“Logan,” James said again, tugging at his arm. Logan turned towards him, fully prepared to argue more, but that’s when James struck.

His lips against Logan’s, were warm, and soft, and gentle.

Logan melted against him, relaxed his shoulders, his spine, and more. He pressed back into James, tentative at first, but harder the more confident he got.

He kissed James until he couldn’t breathe, until all the oxygen was sucked from his lungs, and he was panting. Wanting.

Foreheads knocking, Logan leaned into James’s heat. Astounded, he mumbled, “You really are serious.”

“About you, dude? Always.”

The tiny ball of worry that’s lived in Logan’s chest loosens a bit. “I don’t understand. You beat me up, when we were kids.”

“I thought you were cute,” James explained, like it was any kind of excuse.

Logan supposed for him, it was. James was never great at feelings.

“You didn’t even want to be friends with me.”

“I thought Kendall and Carlos would like you better.” James propped his head on top of Logan’s, hugging him close, and mused, “Did I mention, I always thought you were cute?”

“You have a terrible way of showing it.” Logan wrinkled his nose, wrapping his arms around James’s middle.

He remembered that first day of school, and the first time he saw James. He was beautiful, even as a kid.

He was someone Logan admired, until he descended on him with a pack of mean kids, and made Logan feel idiotic for even thinking it.

Logan stressed, “So terrible.”

“I know.” James pulled back, looking Logan straight in the eyes. “I think I can make it up to you. I have an amazing plan.”

“Does it involve kissing?” Logan asked, with more than a little hope.

“Yes.” James nodded vigorously. “It involves a megaton of kisses. More kisses than you can even imagine.”

“I can imagine a lot of kisses,” Logan replied, levelly.

James pressed his mouth against the tip of Logan’s nose. “We better get started then.”

**Author's Note:**

> I started this a long, long time ago (2012) maybe, and saw it sitting mostly finished in my BTR folder like WHY NOT? I believe this was originally a gift fic for queenitsy when she was going through a rough time, and I wanted to write about Logan's relationship with his mom, but it evolved into something a little more experimental. (But if she ever reads this, it's still James/Logan and therefore still totally for her!)


End file.
